[Chapter-delegates] Notes from the Prague chapter and members meeting, 23rd March 2007

[Anne Lord]

Dear Colleagues,

The notes from the Chapters and Members meeting held in Prague, 23rd  
March, 2007.  Thanks to Dawit Bekele for the note-taking. Comments,  
questions, corrections and feedback are welcome.

Both the notes from this meeting and from the Lisbon meeting will be  
posted to the Chapter news wiki.

Best wishes,

Anne
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Anne Lord, Senior Manager                             <lord at isoc.org>
Chapter & Individual Memberships                  http://www.isoc.org
Internet Society (ISOC)                "The Internet is for everyone"
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Summary of ISOC Chapter and Members meeting
Friday, March 23, 2007
Attendees:

Over 22 persons attended the meeting (apologies if anyone was missed).

Chapters/members:
o Hans-Peter Dittler, ISOC-DE
o Peter Koch (Starting from 11:36), ISOC-DE
o Sebastian Bachollet, ISOC-FR
o Cheryl Langdon-Orr, (by phone), ISOC-AU
o Teodor Ciontu, ISOC-RO (on Jabber)

Trustees:
o Daniel Karrenberg
o Franck Martin
o Erik Huizer
o Fred Baker
o Desiree Miloshevic
o Bill St.Arnaud
o Patrik Fältström

Staff
o Anne Lord (by telephone)
o Lucy lynch (Starting from 11:10 AM)
o Mirjam Kuehne
o Terry Monroe
o Constance Bommelaer
o Lynn St.Amour
o Matthew Shears (by telephone)
o Karen Rose
o Terry Weigler
o Peter Godwin
o Mark Thalhimer
o Dawit Bekele (taking notes)

1. Summary of Presentations

Terry Monroe, Matthew Shears, Karen Rose and Mark Thalhimer gave  
presentations about ISOC's recent and planned activities with regards  
to chapter support and development, but also education and policy,  
with the participation of chapters. The presentations are available at:

http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/meetings/prague.php.

Karen Rose said that in the Education area, the priorities were to  
expand the delivery of technical training programs, support the IETF  
fellowship program, support the regional network operator fora,  
regional INETs and improve technical information distribution. The  
department is also concerned with identifying opportunities in  
technical & policy education, with chapters, members and experts.

Matthew Shears presented the policy area priorities which include the  
following:
o Leading the Internet governance debate
o User Centric Internet advocacy, which is a new focus
o Internet Policy Presence
o Leveraging Public Policy and Education in the multilingualism,  
security and access areas

Mark Thalhimer said that the priorities for the communication area are:
o Extending press and communication activities
o Redesigning of ISOC website which will start on the 2nd half of 2007
o Defining communication needs of chapters
o Strengthening two-way communication with chapters
o Improving the IT infrastructure

Terry Monroe stated the priorities in the organisational membership  
area as:
o Member retention priority
o Membership recruitment drive
o Sponsorship

Terry also commented on the chapter development programme and noted  
that for the individual members, ISOC will be examining the value  
proposition and look at improving the benefits. The membership system  
is a matter of priority for ISOC. A consultant who has experience in  
membership systems has been engaged, initially to define business  
rules. This is a first and important step as today, there are various  
models of the business rules that are in use.  Finally the next round  
of project funding will be opened very soon. ISOC chapters and  
members in good standing are eligible for grants up to $10K USD with  
a total of $200,000 USD available. There are two rounds a year, next  
round will open in April.

Lucy Lynch briefly presented ISOC 2020 project plan and informed the  
participants that there would be a session to work on the plan the  
next day.

2. Questions and discussion

Daniel Karrenberg started by highlighting the need for chapters to  
know more about how other chapters are dealing with various issues.  
This would allow them to have a more cohesive message and look. He  
recommended that ISOC facilitates that.

Sebastien Bachollet from ISOC France continued by saying that Franck  
Martin and Luc Faubert should be commended for setting-up a part of  
the chapter web site. He said that the website can be used for  
information exchange between chapters. He said that it would be  
useful to examine the various organizational structures (Bureaus,  
chapters, ECC etc.) that currently exist.

Hans Peter followed by Franck Martin added that it would also be  
helpful to have press releases issued by ISOC. The chapters could  
then take the press releases and adapt them locally to before  
publishing them. If there are weekly press releases it will help to  
keep ISOC in the headlines. After some discussions, it was agreed  
that a template in various languages would be a good start.

Cheryl Langdon from ISOC-AU followed by saying that maybe there is a  
role for an education unit to look at requests coming in to chapter  
or members.

Matthew mentioned that the in the dynamic coalitions  (DC's)  
committees set up at the IGF discussion will take (and is taking)  
place on the various issues that came out of the IGF. The staff as  
well as some ISOC members and chapters are participating in the  
discussions.

Several participants raised the issue of many chapters participating  
in ICANN activities, especially in ALAC and RALO's.  Lynn St.Amour  
informed the participants that there will be a meeting of the ISOC  
and ICANN senior staff during the ICANN meeting in Lisbon next week.  
The objective is to discuss collaboration (and also involvement of  
chapters and RALOs).

A message from ISOC-AU was read to the participants. ISOC-AU thanked  
its members and ISOC internationally for their support and well  
wishes on its tenth anniversary.  The full message can be found in  
Appendix A. More information on ISOC-AU activities is available at  
http://www.isoc-au.org.au.

Lucy indicated that if the 2020 framework is accepted by the Board,  
there will probably be a separate mailing list set up for discussion  
purposes. In the meantime, comments can be sent to lynch at isoc.org or  
planning @isoc.org. There will also be time during the Board of  
Trusties meeting to examine this subject in more detail and she  
welcomed everyone's participation.

Franck informed the gathering that PICISOC is working on an IPv6  
project and would like to collaborate with others. He also mentioned  
that a lot of people are interested in security, and that he is  
looking for speakers for PacINET. He would like to raise awareness  
about security in general, and is looking for anti-virus experts in  
particular.

At the close of the meeting, Hans-Peter asked the staff to try to get  
more chapters at the meeting next time. Daniel said that ISOC will  
also work to provide more online tools for people to participate  
remotely. This would hopefully increase the number of participants.  
Cheryl suggested organizing smaller meetings to reach out to chapters  
more often. Sebastien also asked the staff to provide date and agenda  
for meetings early in advance. This could also increase physical  
participation.

Franck said that this time there were a lot of update from ISOC  
staff, and suggested that in the future the local chapter hosts the  
meeting and drives the agenda.

Sebastien thanked Matthew and the other policy staff on their report  
about policy and IGF at EGENI.

Lynn recognised the tremendous amount of work that Anne has put on  
chapters over the last few months.


Appendix A

Message from ISOC - AU
ISOC-AU achieved its ten year milestone in November 2006. Over this  
time the society has been active in many national and international  
fora and it has run and participated in numerous seminars,  
conferences and consultations. ISOC-AU has also lodged frequent  
submissions to Government, and has promoted the interests of Internet  
participants in Australia and internationally.

ISOC-AU in mid-2006 received funding in conjunction with other  
Australian organisations from the national Government for an "IPv6  
for e-Business" project. The project aims are to develop and document  
business tools for IPv6, as well as raising awareness and assessing  
business readiness for IPv6 within Australia. A goal of the project  
is to build Australian capacity to take advantage of future  
innovation in this area, especially for business-to-business supply  
chains. More information can be found at http://www.ipv6.org.au .

ISOC-AU thanks its members and ISOC internationally for their support  
and well wishes on its tenth anniversary - see letters of  
congratulations and photos and minutes from the Inaugural Meeting at  
http://url.edna.edu.au/4MKa . More information on ISOC-AU activities  
can be found at www.isoc-au.org.au .